Development of a numerical simulation system toward comprehensive assessments of urban warming countermeasures including their impacts upon the urban buildings' energy-demands

One of the detrimental effects caused by the urban warming phenomena is the increase of energy consumption due to the artificial air-conditioning of buildings in summer. In greater Tokyo, the temperature sensitivity of the peak electricity demand reaches up to 3%/degreesC in recent years, and about 1.5 GW of new demand is required as the daily maximum temperature increases by 1.0degreesC. This huge demand for summer electricity is considered to be one of the common characteristics of big cities in Asian countries. In order to simulate this increase in cooling energy demands and to evaluate urban warming countermeasures from the viewpoint of buildings' energy savings, a numerical simulation system was developed adopting a new one-dimensional urban canopy meteorological model coupled with a simple sub-model for the building energy analysis. Then, the system was applied to the Ootemachi area, a central business district in Tokyo. Preliminary verification of the simulation system using observational data on the outdoor and indoor thermal conditions showed good results. Simulations also indicated that the cut-off of the anthropogenic heat from air-conditioning facilities could produce a cooling energy saving up to 6% with the outdoor air-temperature decrease by more than 1degreesC in the summer urban canopy over Ootemachi area. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.